What’s Up With Casco Bay Furniture – My Furniture Forum?
Posted by Richard on Jan 2, 2020 in Brompton Leather, Buying Furniture Online, Furniture Factories, In the News, Interviews with Experts, Leather Furniture | Comments Off on What’s Up With Casco Bay Furniture – My Furniture Forum?Dear Friends,
We have been fortunate enough to receive some wonderful testimonials over the years from customers who are close to raving fans.
Dear Casco Bay Friends…delivery yesterday completed!! What a sofa! We are delighted…wonderful work!! Bristol Sofa, 89″W x 39″D x 29″H, with Tufted Seat and Small Antique Brass Nails. Cheers…Chuck (chuck.frost46@gmail.com)
Updated – If you are in the middle of shopping for leather furniture you may have run across derogatory comments about Casco Bay on myfurnitureforum.com.
It turns out that the forum, in addition to being educational, is a gateway to sell leather furniture in direct competition to Casco Bay. The primary leather and fabric upholstery brands sold on myfurnitureforum.com are Taylor King and Hancock and Moore as well as Bradington Young and Century.
Who makes our leather upholstery?
We have partnered with specialty factories to produce our furniture. The owner of one of these companies, that produces our leather furniture, is Tim Shook. The Shook family founded Taylor King in 1974, later selling the business to the owners of Hancock and Moore.
Tim was the plant manager for his family and for the owners of Hancock and Moore. Later Tim decided to branch out on his own, opening Jonathan Wesley Furniture, making a comparable product in quality, to the one he produced at Taylor King, in a state-of-the-art, fully staffed facility, located at 5941 Rink Dam Road, Taylorsville, NC. (photo below)
The Brighton. Choose from: 156 Full Grain, Full Aniline leathers, 9 nailheads in 3 sizes and 6 legs in 8 finishes. 7 sofas from 67″ to 117″ with matching and Chippendale chairs, chaises and sectionals, in 2 depths, 38″ or 42″. Custom: sizes, finishes, nails and a loose cushion option. Subsidized White Glove Delivery. Free extended service plan. No Tax.
Coincidentally, Tim was replaced at Taylor King by his brother.
All the upholsterers Tim employs, who tailor our sofas, were his former employees. His director of product development is Roger Jones. Roger has 46 years of experience, previously as the Director of Product Development for Vanguard Furniture, and 12 years at Hancock and Moore, first as a upholsterer and then as a pattern maker. The pattern maker is the most important individual in any upholstery factory.
Casco Bay Furniture’s leather sofas, are made with full grain, full aniline dyed leathers, 5/4 Maple frames, True 8 Way Hand Tied, Hand Knotted Springs and Hand Needle Tufting. Our sofas are built to last for decades with proper care.
Our goal is to help our customers lead better lives by providing high end leather furniture at a substantially lower price competitors can’t or won’t offer.
“How can our prices be so competitive?” It’s very simple, our specialty factory does not have the enormous overhead of a large manufacturer with multiple brands, multi million dollar showrooms, hundreds of employees and hundreds of retailers, many with their own costly showrooms and warehouses filled with unsold inventory. And who is paying for all this? The retail customer.
Ask yourself: Do I have to pay $10,000 or more for a high quality leather sofa in a high quality leather? Do I have to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to upgrade from one leather to the next? Do I have to compromise and purchase a lower quality product, a promotional leather or an imported married leather cut and sew program to hit a price point? The answer to these questions is no.
At Casco Bay we purchase all of our own leather eliminating the factory mark up on leather. Full grain full aniline dyed leather can represent 40% or more of the wholesale cost of a leather sofa or sectional. We pass along all of these savings to our customers.
This gives us a significant wholesale cost advantage. Our retail mark up is also substantially lower than a typical furniture retailer because of our business model. This is how you can potentially save thousands of dollars compared to a similarly built name brand product using many of the same suppliers for raw materials (see below) and similar labor costs, except that most of the brand names use plywood frames to save money.
Our mission is to provide our customers with an exceptional customer experience. Some of our high priced competitors are not happy with our business model. However, after 14 years, our more than 14000 customers have seen the exceptional value of what we are offering.
We encourage everyone to visit our factory in Taylorsville, North Carolina where you can meet the owner and see the construction, tailoring and quality of our leather furniture? Give us a call to arrange an appointment.
Experience. Our factory owner, our upholsterers, our tufters, our spring up men and our stitchers have decades of experience and expertise. Our business is generational. My dad, born and raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina, started in the furniture business in 1944, 80 years ago, having just returned from the war. After receiving an MBA I began my career as a brand manger for a Fortune 500 company transitioning to the furniture industry in 1978, 46 years ago. I asked Mr. Shook how long have you been in the business. “I have been in the business for 42 years. At Taylor King I spent 5 years as a spring up man, 8 years as an upholsterer and several years in product development before becoming plant manager. So I pitch in which is appreciated”.
Help Wanted. In NC many furniture manufacturers such as Bernhardt, Hancock and Moore, Hickory Chair, Leathercraft, and Sherrill are having difficulty finding find help, some offering $6000 sign on bonuses. I asked Mr. Shook, do you have this problem? He said no. “We get unsolicited applicants every week. We have a good time at work. We do not have a corporate atmosphere or a punitive point system common in the industry with 3 points you’re written up, with 4 you’re fired. One applicant, an experienced upholsterer, said he received a 1/2 a point for taking the day off for his grandmothers funeral. We offer our employees flex time and they are well paid”.
Would you like to learn more? Interested in some insider insights into the manufacturing of leather furniture? Please click “read more” and continue reading.
Considering our product, read our reviews on Houzz.com, 76 of which have customer photography of our furniture in their homes from some of our more than 14,000 customers. All Houzz reviews are verified by Houzz by IP address and street address.
“Why do we have so many great reviews?” Because when our furniture arrives at our customers’ homes, the outstanding quality of the product surpasses their expectations. When expectations are surpassed people want to talk about it.
We include a free, 5-year extended protection plan, with a replacement feature, a 30 day reporting period and nationwide coverage of up to $30,000. The warranty is fully insured and underwritten by TWG with 5.5 Billion in assets. TWG insures a selection of warranty options. We purchase their premium option. Having purchased nearly 14,000 warranties for our customers we have a 98% claim success rate. Personally, having been in the business for many years, I have found this to be one of the best and it is one of the most expensive warranties available in our industry. TWG is owned by Assurant Inc, a Fortune 500 company, rated A+ by the BBB. Assurant, one of the largest companies in America, provides global insurance solutions worldwide.
We carry 156 Full Grain, Full Aniline Dyed Leathers, each leather style with their complete color line, accounting for 99% of our sales, most of which is produced and tanned in Europe’s oldest and finest tannery, located in Bassano del Grappa VI, Italy. Our exclusive supplier is Moore and Giles of Forest Virginia, the world’s premier leather supplier. Moore and Giles is the same supplier used by Century, Hancock and Moore, Ralph Lauren, Sherrill and Taylor King and others when they upholster with leather of this quality. www.mooreandgiles.com/leather/shop
We do not buy leather from tanneries in China, South America or cut and sew programs from China, where leather is cut and sewn in China and shipped to the US to be upholstered. What’s wrong with this? Leather originating in China and South America are lower in quality. High humidity and high temperature in overseas containers can cause mold and even E. coli to grow. To inhibit this some Chinese manufacturers include a chemical in the containers called DMF, but there is an unintended consequence (see below).
Why do companies have these programs? To save money. There are 50,000 furniture factories in China. Manufacturing costs in China are low due to low building-space cost, low wages and lack of stringent safety and environmental regulations. Most of these factories are located in the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta and both are highly polluted from industrial pollution. The Yangtze, the world’s third longest river and the world’s most polluted accounts for 55% of all plastic waste in the world’s oceans.
Ashley, Hancock and Moore and other manufacturers have Chinese cut and sew programs. Many of the sofas made by Natuzzi and Restoration Hardware are manufactured in China though using Italian leather.
All the leather we purchase is Formaldehyde free. 95% of the leather our customers purchase is tanned in one tannery located in Bassano Del Grappa Italy. This 160 year old tannery is the oldest and finest tannery in the world. Use of Formaldehyde in the tanning process is banned in all EU countries.
We purchase all our 5/4 hardwood for our frames from Associated Hardwoods of Granite Falls, North Carolina. This is the same supplier used by Hancock and Moore, Sherrill and other quality manufacturers when they build with hardwood. Century, Hancock and Moore, and Taylor King as well as 98% of the industry including the catalog stores, have moved to plywood frames. Many manufacturers building their sofas with plywood frames disguise the word plywood as, Cross Directional Laminate, Furniture Grade Plywood, Hardwood, Manufactured or Engineered Laminated Hardwood, Mortise and Tennon Oak Joinery and Unibody. Plywood generally, but not always, contains formaldehyde. Plywood can de-laminate and does not have the rigidity of hardwood. Manufacturers like to use plywood frames as they save time and money. www.associatedhardwoods.com.
A 5/4 maple frame is superior to a plywood frame. At Casco Bay Furniture we are one of the few remaining companies still using 5/4 hardwood frames. We are still making our hardwood frames the old fashioned way, in a machine shop. Plywood frames, on the other hand, are produced in a matter of seconds on a machine called a CNC router, then assembled. Which would you rather have?
Our leather sofas do not contain the toxic chemicals commonly found in leather furniture. Hardwood is a natural product and does not contain the glues, off-gassing and other byproducts of plywood. The high resiliency foam in our cushions, produced in North Carolina, are Formaldehyde free. We only purchase leather that is formaldehyde free, not all leather is. [link] – Formaldehyde in Furniture – California Prop. 65 . Never imported, our furniture does not contain a commonly used fungicide, called Dimethyl Fumarate. [link] – DMF in Leather Furniture . This chemical can be stapled in sachets inside imported leather furniture or hung in large sachets, which often tear, in containers. This chemical was banned in the EU in consumer products but not in China or the US.
Our exclusive supplier for our recliner mechanisms, in our recliner and Vari-Tilt chair program, is Ultra-Mek of Denton North Carolina. Ultra-Mek produces the premier mechanism in the industry. Ultra-Mek and Legget and Platt supply the mechanisms for Hancock and Moore and Brandington Young. ultramek.com. The inside spring backs of our Vari-Tilt and reclining chairs are sprung with metal springs. Other industry options include Woven Webbing backs. This method is employed by Bradington Young.
There are several cushion suppliers located in Virginia and North Carolina producing high resiliency foam used by high quality upholstery manufacturers, these include: Catawba, ER Carpenter (Qualux brand name), Royal Comfort and Wayne Industries. We use Catawba, ER Carpenter and Royal Comfort. Hancock and Moore, as an example, uses ER Carpenter, Royal Comfort and Wayne Industries. Our most popular cushion is our High Resiliency Spring Down Cushion.
We do not collect sales tax in most states, we offer subsidized, white glove delivery. Visit our factory. Study our detailed construction photography. If you’re shopping for high quality leather furniture evaluate our product, decide for yourself, you might save yourselves a substantial amount of money. We believe our product is the best leather furniture value in America because we build our beautifully tailored furniture to last for decades.
We require a 25% deposit to place your special order followed by an EZ payment schedule.
Awarded: Casco Bay Furniture, has an A+, award winning, rating with the Better Business Bureau, our 10th year in a row. We have been awarded, “Best of Houzz for Customer Satisfaction 2024″, our 10th year in a row. This exclusive award recognizes just 3 percent of the 2.5 million home professionals on Houzz. We have 134/134, 5 star reviews on Houzz.com. Houzz is the #1 home décor site in the world with 40,000,000 members. Now celebrating our 14th year anniversary.
Please jump on the phone and call us if you have any concerns or questions. You can call us at Casco Bay Furniture at 207-272-0557.
Sincerely, Richard Parker
